


Tedious Turning of Pages and Toys

by MostWeakHamlets



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Human AU, Multi, Pregnancy, Slow Burn, Trans Crowley (Good Omens), beelzebub is the main character for once, family fic, ineffable parents, parenting fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27369841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostWeakHamlets/pseuds/MostWeakHamlets
Summary: Bea is a somewhat successful lawyer, co-parent, and divorcee whose son befriends the new girl at school with a hot aunt.Crowley is the most doting parent in the world to make up for the fact that he's never been in a committed relationship with his daughter's other father.Together, they carpool and provide healthy snacks at Sports Day with healthy doses of bitching in between.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Dagon (Good Omens), past Beelzebub/Gabriel - Relationship
Comments: 35
Kudos: 60





	1. Thursday

**Author's Note:**

> This was 100% inspired by Motherland. I finally got my hands on it, and my friend and I just finished series two (come on... that cliffhanger). After watching it, I thought, "There's no way I can't make this a thing." 
> 
> Also, total warning: there is pregnancy mentioned in this fic. I'll put warnings before chapters that focus on it just in case it squicks some people out, but it's not a major part of the plot of this fic.

_Thursday_

Bea woke up to silence, which hadn’t happened in over 6 years.

At first, they thought that maybe they had woken up in the middle of the night. They thought this with a little joy, knowing they could roll over and get maybe another three hours of sleep. Maybe four. They curbed their enthusiasm at five hours. They hadn’t had more than five hours of sleep in years.

But there was a nagging feeling underneath, chewing at their stomach. Maybe they had slept through their alarm, and they were hours late to work and Cain was hours late to school.

It was silly, they thought. They had an extra cup of coffee the day before. The caffeine was keeping them up.

But they opened their eyes. And saw light through a gap in their curtains.

“Shit.”

They grabbed their phone off their nightstand. Their alarm, annoyingly, was set to 6:00 pm.

_“Shit.”_

They had 20 minutes to get themselves and Cain dressed, fed, groomed, and out the door. It could be worse, they thought. 20 minutes was enough time to throw on clothes and shove a granola bar at Cain. They could eat at their office—their desk had an abundance of processed foods stored away inside it—and brush their hair in the car, then their teeth in the office bathroom.

And if there wasn’t time to detangle Cain’s hair or scrub his face free od crumbs, well, little boys were supposed to be messy. No one would look at a little boy with untidy hair and think, “That’s quite unusual.” Especially when dirt and bugs seemed attracted to them like a magnet. It was a rule of the universe. Little boys get to be messy without judgment.

“Cain, get up. We overslept.” Cain whined when Bea turned the lights on and threw his blankets off of him. “Come on. Get your uniform on.”

The six-year-old boy sat up with a scowl that rivaled his zaza’s. Bea was pleased that he had inherited that from them even if most of the time he was a walking ball of sunshine. They had no idea where that came from with a zaza like them and a father like Gabriel.

“Come on. Trousers. Shirt.”

Cain was a spitting image of Bea. He had their blue eyes and dark, unruly hair. Everyone had said that it was a shame he didn’t look more like Gabriel—specifically, that he didn’t get Gabriel’s purple eyes. Bea usually snapped in response, “They’re not purple actually. They’re just a really odd shade of gray. And Cain would probably get bullied if he had purple eyes, so it’s best they came out blue, isn’t it?”

Every night for the past four years, Bea rejoiced in the fact that Cain looked so little like Gabriel.

Once he was in his little school uniform and running off to the bathroom, Bea returned to their own room with a prayer that they had an outfit for the day. Laundry day had been skipped when Cain needed supplies from the craft store for a project on Tuesday and the skipped again when Bea desperately needed a nap on Wednesday.

They pulled their last top out of the closet and grabbed a somewhat-clean pair of trousers from the chair in the corner. It would have to do. Laundry could be done that night when they got home. It would _need_ to get done. Cain was running dangerously low on clean pants.

“Zaza!”

A distressed voice came from the bathroom as Bea shook out the jacket they had worn every day that week.

“What is it?” they called back.

“Zaza!”

Bea sighed. “One minute!”

While tucking their top into their trousers, they began to make their way to the bathroom where Cain was yelling. Their phone buzzing behind them stopped them and forced them to turn on their heel.

They didn’t want a call. They wanted to get Cain in his shoes and backpack and out the door.

“What do you want?”

“I have a huge favor to ask of you.” On the other end of the phone, Anthony Crowley sounded hoarse and tired, and Bea knew where the conversation was going. “Can you pick up Eden and take her to school?”

“Are you serious?”

“I have that bug that’s going around. I can’t take her.”

Bea took a moment to breathe in deeply. There was no time to get angry even if Crowley made their ears ring and heart race.

“Only if Cain gets picked up with Eden today.”

“Fine. Zira’s doing pick up. I’ll let him know.”

Bea didn’t like leaving Cain in the care of Zira. He was the only man to make Bea see red just by existing.

Cain learned bad things from him. Like to be nice to everyone regardless of what they do. And to always turn the other cheek when wronged. Bea didn’t want Cain to become a push-over. They wanted him to stand his ground and have the balls to tell people what he really thought of them. The world didn’t need any overly-friendly _kindness._

And Zira wasn’t even a totally kind person. He was passive-aggressive and spiteful and hid behind his nice guy persona to maintain his holier-than-thou complex.

Bea dwelled on this as they brushed a knot out of Cain’s hair.

“We have to leave a bit earlier to pick up Eden,” they said. And then, mostly to themselves, “It takes only five minutes to get to their house, but it’s in the opposite direction from school. So, it’ll take 15 minutes instead of 10 to get to school. We’d have to leave Crowley’s house at 7:45 to get to school on time. Which means we have to leave _here_ at 7:40. Which is…” Bea looked at their phone. “5 minutes ago.”

Bea rushed Cain through the rest of their morning routines. They brushed his teeth quickly (they had a spare toothbrush and travel-sized toothpaste in their work bag for mornings like these) and shoved shoes onto feet. Bea rutted around in the glove department in their car on their way to Crowley’s house until they found an abandoned energy bar that resembled a brick under a napkin and an empty bottle of pain relievers.

“Eat that.” Cain happily began to. “I’ll get Eden.”

Crowley answered the door in his robe and childless. He was pale, and his hair was pulled into a messy bun.

“Where is she? We’re late?”

Crowley leaned in the doorway. “Didn’t you get my text?”

“No. I was trying to leave my house so I could tote your child off to school on time. I didn’t look at my texts. Why would I look at my texts?”

“Eden’s sick, too. She vomited on her uniform. I called her off—”

Bea was already storming away. They stopped half-way down the walkway and turned back around.

“Can Zira still pick up Cain?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Bea wrinkled their nose when they imagined Cain walking home with him, probably being asked about the best parts of his day and being praised when Zira heard he shared a snack.

“You know, forget it. I’ll get him on my break.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

There was no way they were going to make it to school or work on time now. All because of the diseased Crowleys. All because they had tossed their phone into the bottom of their bag rather than their jacket pocket as they usually did.

“Where’s Eden?” Cain asked, mouth covered in chocolate (did the energy bar have chocolate in it?), when Bea slid back into the car.

“Eden’s ill.” Bea threw the car into reverse. “She’s bloody ill.”

* * *

Crowley waited until Eden was sound asleep before he called Zira. He brushed her red hair away from her feverish brow while the phone rung.

While his stomach had calmed with a cup of tea, Eden only wanted the comfort of her father to cure her ills. And who was Crowley to deny her that when he knew that a good cuddle was the best medicine?

“Anthony?”

“Hey, angel.”

“What’s the matter? You sound ill.”

Crowley smiled. Zira was so intuitive. “I am. And so is Eden. I was just letting you know that you don’t have to pick her up from school today. Or probably tomorrow. We’re taking the rest of the week off.”

“Poor things.”

“You don’t have to have her this weekend, either. I’ll keep her here.”

There was a pause before Zira spoke again. “I don’t feel like I _have_ to have her.”

“Yeah. But you get the weekend off, either way.”

“It’s not like she’s a kid I’m babysitting. She’s my daughter.”

“I know. I know. I just mean… it’ll be a nice break, you know? Just you and yourself.”

“I like having her.”

“I know you do.”

“I look forward to our weekends together. If she’s ill, then keep her home. But I never feel like I _have_ to look after her.”

Crowley rubbed Eden’s back. She was the best thing to ever happen to either of them. They adored her, and she was doted on every minute they had her.

If anything, she was the main reason Zira and Crowley maintained their weird-somewhat-relationship-thing. Co-parenting allowed for phone calls and texts and dinners. They went to school programs and did shopping for Christmases and birthdays together. They alternated whose house they did holidays at and occasionally took trips out of London. They had dozens of pictures of the three of them at beaches and in little shops and cafes. Crowley couldn’t have asked for a better co-parent/sometimes-boyfriend.

But Crowley felt that sometimes Zira didn’t know what to do with her. He had confessed once that he was paralyzed with fear the first he had her one his own. She was just a baby, and he barely left her side. Even at night, he slept in a chair next to her crib with everything she could possibly need on standby.

“She’s not a chore,” Aziraphale said. “She’s my daughter.”

“Yeah.”

Aziraphale continued to struggle as she got older. He tended to spoil her with anything she wanted—too afraid to say no in fear that she would develop any resentment towards him. When Crowley said bedtime was at 8, Aziraphale would let her stay up until 8:30. When Crowley told her no sweets too close to dinner, Aziraphale would sneak whatever she wanted to her.

Crowley thought of it less as parenting and more of an anxious attempt to be Eden’s friend, which left him in the dangerous position of being the strict parent.

“If you’d like, you could always pick her up from school Monday,” Crowley said.

“I’d love to, but I’m working late Monday.”

“Right.”

“But maybe we could all have dinner then if you’re both feeling up to it. I’ll cook.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll let you two rest. Feel better. Give Eden a kiss for me.”

“Will do, angel.”


	2. Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bea needs a break and meets a hot aunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two yay 
> 
> next chapter focuses on crowley and aziraphale

_Friday_

Bea left their office at exactly 2:30 p.m and elbowed their way to the front of the school gates at 2:50 p.m.

They looked between their watch and the doors of the school every minute. If they could grab Cain the moment he walked out, they could make it back to their office before their hour break was over and still have time to grab food from the cafeteria for both of them. It wasn’t their usual routine. On Fridays, Cain went home with Eden and Crowley watched them while Bea worked late. But this Friday, Crowley and Eden were still sick, and Crowley wouldn’t accept Cain no matter how much Bea talked about “herd immunity.”

A burst of children ran out the doors. Bea looked out for the messy, black hair that belonged to them in the sea of children’s heads. As the crowd of parents thinned out, there was finally the mop of hair Bea was looking for. But it was attached to two red braids and headed _away_ from Bea.

“Come _on._ ”

They had so much work to do at their office, they didn’t want to waste any time running after their child. If they didn’t get back to their work soon, they would fall behind and leave the office pathetically late. Which wouldn’t have been _too_ awful of a problem if Cain were with Crowley. But no. Crowley just had to disrupt their schedule.

They followed Cain to the second opening in the gates and met him as he stood in front of a red-haired woman.

“Hello,” Bea said.

The woman had been doting on the little girl and looked up when she heard Bea. She smiled, and it was a genuine, wide thing that really showed joy. Bea did their best to smile, though it was something the muscles in their face weren’t used to.

“You have my child,” they said.

“Oh. This one must be yours. He came with mine.”

Cain attached himself to Bea’s legs, tiny arms wrapping around their knees and head resting against their hip.

“I’m Deegan. This is Lili,” the woman said, holding out her hand. “I’m her aunt.”

Bea shook it with a limp wrist. “I’m Bea, this one’s parent.”

“It looks like they got along well. Today was Lili’s first day—”

“Wow. That’s swell. We have to go.”

Bea tugged Cain away. He turned around to wave at his new friend before clinging to Bea’s hand and re-telling the events of his day to them. Bea buckled him up in his car seat and placed his tiny backpack next to him.

“Lili is really nice.”

“That’s lovely.”

“She came to our class today. Ms. Richards asked me to be her buddy.” Some information was cut off as Bea closed the door and rushed to their own seat. “She sat next to me because there’s a empty desk next to mine, and we did maths together, and we read a poem together. But we shared crayons when we had to color in rhyming words because she doesn’t have her own crayons yet, but we could share okay. And then, we ate lunch together, and after that, we played together, and I helped her go down the slide.”

“That all sounds wonderful, Cain.”

“And I showed her our class pet and where we hang our jackets, and after school, I walked her outside.”

“Yes, I saw you two.”

The story continued as a non-linear tale, with new details being revealed when they were no longer relevant and Bea could no longer remember what they pertained to. Bea half-listened and focused on weaving through post-school traffic giving occasional sounds of encouragement.

They also thought about the red-headed woman. Deegan. She had looked familiar, the more Bea dwelled on her face. She had a soft jaw and somewhat of a long face, all exposed as her long hair had been pulled back into a low-do.

Bea had had long hair in their childhood. Their mother had forced it on them. It was thick and tangled easily. It was somewhere between straight and wavy, never cared for well as they would rip a hairbrush through it every morning and night and scrub it with shampoo during baths. In the summers, it made their head as hot as a frying pan and created a mini-sauna on the back of their neck.

No matter how much they begged, their mother never allowed them to cut it. When they complained of the heat, she plaited it tightly. When they complained that it was too much to manage, she re-taught them how to brush and wash.

Finally, at 10, they had enough and left a pile of hair on the bathroom floor as they hacked away with a pair of scissors from their schoolbag. They walked to dinner with pride, hair uneven and laying awkwardly just over their ears.

Deegan’s hair looked well-managed. She wore it long with pride. She had probably never made her mother cry in the kitchen and been whisked off to whatever salon was still open. She probably had a routine and spent a lot of money on special serums and appliances.

Bea had to have seen her before. Hair like that didn’t sprout on just anyone.

“Alright, your dad said he’d _try_ to get you before dinner, but he didn’t make any promises.”

The bastard never did. Gabriel was useless on his best and an inconvenience on his worst.

Bea helped Cain out of the car and held his hand while they ordered at the cafeteria. For Bea, a sandwich and their third cup of coffee of the day. For Cain, a cup of macaroni and cheese and a juice box.

“You can do whatever you’d like in my office until dad gets you. Or until I can take you home myself.” Bea led him into their office. “Whichever happens first.”

They set him up on their couch, stabbed the straw through the juice box for him and handed him his spork for his macaroni.

“After you finish eating, you can draw or you can read or you could bother one of the nice ladies outside for candy. Sound alright?”

Cain nodded and shoved a sporkful of macaroni in his mouth. The last time he had to join Bea in their office, he had been eager to run around and get as much attention as possible. The kid flourished when adults pinched his cheeks. But today, he looked more interested in his snack.

Bea sat at their own desk and returned to their obscene stack of case reports. Fridays were the worst for them. Everyone else seemed to get off easy and go home early, but they were always stuck with a pile of work at the end of the week that they hadn’t touched yet. Unfortunately still in the early stages of their career, they didn’t see an end to it in sight.

They ate their sandwich without tasting it. For the best, really. It had probably been sitting out for hours before they bought it.

They thought about Deegan again as they opened a new binder. Whatever she did must have left her with free Friday afternoons. Lucky prick.

And they _swore_ they had seen her face before. Maybe they had crossed paths at school before the little girl was enrolled. Maybe she had taken a tour while Bea was dropping Cain off.

They had to have seen Deegan somewhere before. They couldn’t have been mistaking her for someone else. Maybe a text to Crowley would solve it. He had tabs on all the parents.

“Zaza?”

Bea looked down. Cain stood at their side with his big, blue eyes turned up at them with a little pout.

“What is it?”

“Can I sit with you?”

“Don’t you want to go pester anyone for chocolate? Or draw me a picture?”

Bea was tough, but their biggest weakness was Cain’s drawings. They didn’t hang them in their office lest someone thought they were soft, but they were tucked safely in their briefcase at all times. They genuinely believed that he had the beginnings of real talent. His people had just started to resemble people.

Cain shook his head. He raised his arms.

Bea pulled him up and into their lap. He was getting heavy, they thought. Probably getting close to outgrowing hugs.

“Do you think dad is going to come?”

Bea brushed Cain’s hair back from his forehead. It was getting long in the front, but they wouldn’t take him to a barber until he asked to.

“I don’t think he will, kid.”

And while Bea had no trouble shit-talking their ex in front of anyone who would listen (and even those who wouldn’t), they thought that Cain still had some innocence to spare. So, they hardly said anything bad about Gabriel to him. If Gabriel could pull of being a good dad to Cain, then that was their business. Bea would just tell Crowley all about how they were considering spreading a rumor that he was sleeping with half the mommies of Cain’s class.

Cain didn’t say anything else. He laid back against Bea’s chest and watched them turn pages of their reports while Bea thought about hair.


	3. Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eden wants a dog.

_Saturday_

Zira let himself into the apartment, carrying a small bag from the chemist. He looked at his miserable sometimes-partner and daughter, both flushed with fever and exhausted.

“You both look awful,” he said. “How’s the little angel doing?”

Eden laid on the couch under a blanket, staring blankly at an animal program playing on the television. Zira felt her forehead and clicked his tongue.

“Her fever’s gone down, actually,” Crowley said. He was curled up on the armchair, wrapped up in his own blanket to ward off chills. His body felt heavy. Despite not having had a proper meal in days, he felt weighed down. Like every muscle had turned to lead and his bones were made of steel. “It spiked at two this morning.”

His own fever has remained stubbornly the same since Friday afternoon, leaving him drained and uncomfortable.

“Poor darling.”

Zira sat her up and took a seat where her head had been. She immediately leaned into him and snuggled in close. He was her favorite pillow, she had told him once. Crowley understood. Zira was so soft and warm, and it was nice to just wrap one’s arms around him and fall asleep pressed into his side. It was Crowley’s favorite part of sleeping with his sometimes-partner.

But it had been years since Zira had shared a bed with Crowley. Or even an apartment. And Crowley was oddly jealous of his daughter who had a monopoly on cuddles for six years.

“I suppose it’s best that you got sick now and not closer to your birthday,” Zira said.

“Oh yeah, we wouldn’t want to cancel your party,” Crowley said. “I already got decorations.”

Zira tucked her blanket close to her shoulders and brushed her long, red hair away from her face. “Do you know what you want for your birthday yet?”

And Eden’s eyes lit up. They sparkled with something other than fever, and she smiled up at her papa, and Crowley knew exactly what she was going to ask for.

“A puppy,” she said.

“A puppy?”

“I already said no dogs,” Crowley said. “They’re a lot of work, and they’re messy and take up a lot of space.”

“But what if we get a _little_ dog?” Eden asked.

“Little dogs are a lot of work, too.”

“Maybe your daddy and I can discuss it—”

“ _No!_ ” Zira’s head shot up at Crowley’s outburst. He looked genuinely angry—eyebrows furrowed and a scowl on his lips. “I’ve already said no. We can’t have a dog here.”

The constant ache in his stomach had shortened his temper. He would regret snapping at Zira later. He would remember how his eyes widened and his eyebrows tilted up in a sad way, and he would send a text to apologize. Zira, of course, would reassure him that there were no hard feelings. That he had gone too far, and he couldn’t blame Crowley for getting upset.

And it would put another bump in their relationship that they would pretend didn’t exist. Maybe someday they would iron it out with all the other ones. Maybe they would do it before Eden went to university.

“Alright, my love,” Zira said to Eden. “You’ll have to think of another gift. I’ll get you anything you want.”

Zira continued to dote. He stroked her little cheek which was adorably chubby with baby fat still, and soon, she was fast asleep.

Crowley wished that there were more moments like _those_ —where Eden could fall asleep against her papa, content and warm. Where he could just relax in his own corner and take a breather. It made them all happier, Crowley believed.

They were better than the moments of borderline arguments and future apology texts.

“Can I get you anything?”

Zira smiled at Crowley. He was always so caring when he wasn’t busy being an awkward, infuriating bastard.

“More tea would be lovely,” Crowley said. “My cup’s gone cold.”

With the same grace he had when she was only a newborn, Zira moved out from under Eden and laid her down.

He picked up Crowley’s half-empty mug and, before turning away, pressed his hand to Crowley’s forehead. It made Crowley’s skin tingle. He hadn’t been touched like that in ages.

“You’re burning up, too.”

“I’ll be fine, angel.”

“Have you been taking anything for the fever?”

“Yeah, but I vomit it up before it actually does anything.”

“Have you managed to eat?”

“It ends up with the paracetamol.”

“Let me try to fix that. I’ll make you and Eden soup tonight. By hand.”

“Will you?”

“It’ll cure all your ills.”

Crowley believed it. He believed that Zira possessed the power to heal him and Eden with only soup. Nauseatingly, Zira insisted it was the _love_ he put in his meals. Crowley would wrinkle his nose at it, but he couldn’t not accept anything Zira made. Mostly because Zira was a great cook. But also because he had the widest smile and brightest eyes when he presented food to Crowley. And Crowley was always weak for that smile and those eyes.

“I put honey in it,” Zira said, handing over a new mug with new tea. “Just in case your throat is a little sore from—any nasty business.”

It _was_ sore. Just a touch raw from abuse. And of course, Zira would have known.

“Thanks.” Crowley sipped his tea. It was just hot enough to warm him up but didn’t scald his tongue. The honey was a nice touch. “Did you close the shop today?”

“Uh, yes. It wasn’t very busy, and I thought that my time could be better spent being here. In general.”

Crowley didn’t believe that it wasn’t a busy day for the shop. Zira always looked for reasons to close his shop. It was a miracle it was still up and running.

“I do have something to talk to you about,” he said, perching on the arm of the sofa. “Related to the bookshop—a little bit related. It’s business-related, is what I mean.”

“Okay.”

“I know that Eden’s party is next Saturday—”

“Right.”

“—But I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. There’s a rare book fair, and I was invited to a luncheon with other collectors. I was told it would be a great networking opportunity. I don’t meet many other booksellers who handle first editions, you know.”

“I do know.”

“I’ll barely miss the party. The luncheon is in town, and right after, I’ll leave and come here. I’ll be here before you cut the cake. _And_ I’m still making her dinner on her actual birthday on Sunday.”

“That’s right.”

Crowley, deep down, didn’t want to let Zira off. He wanted to say that Eden should always come first, but he knew that practically, the luncheon would mean a lot to Zira’s business. And if his business went well, then there could be more money towards future expenses for Eden (and Crowley had learned in nearly 7 years that there were a _lot)_. There could be more days taken off for family holidays. There could potentially be an assistant hired.

But Crowley still winced when he told Zira it was okay. There was a deep, nagging feeling in his gut (not related to the virus) that it wouldn’t end so well.

“Thank you, dear. I promise it won’t take too long.”

The feeling didn’t ease up as he napped or ate the soup Zira so lovingly made or even when he was on the bathroom floor at midnight. There was no relief as he curled up in bed and let his fever lull him into sleep.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Aziraphale not being able to wiggle out of the luncheon and showing up after the other kids went home. He thought about being left alone to try to watch all of them. He thought about calling around for last-minute favors when he could have asked Aziraphale to pick up the ice cream he forgot.

He thought about Bea’s smug face when they told him that he shouldn’t be surprised Aziraphale flaked out.

He picked up at his phone at 3 am to tell Zira that he had changed his mind. He didn’t approve of the luncheon anymore. Zira had a duty to his family.

An entire paragraph sat in the box, but Crowley deleted it before he could convince himself to press send. Instead, he asked if Zira would mind taking Eden to school on Monday if she was feeling better.

He woke up to a text in the late morning from Zira that simply read, _anything for you._


	4. Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cain has little hands.

_Sunday_

Bea had called Crowley, texted Hastur, e-mailed Ligur, and even considered sending a Facebook message to Michael.

No one knew much about Deegan.

Crowley reported that she must have some sort of custody of her niece because the big mommy group added her to their group chat already. She wasn’t very active, though, and popped in only to give her niece’s name, age, and teacher as all parents were asked to do upon admittance.

Hastur knew nothing.

Ligur told Bea he would do a full background check on Deegan but only came up with a LinkedIn profile after three hours.

By then, Bea was nearly desperate enough to reach out to Michael. She would know everything about Deegan down to where she shopped. But messaging Michael would get them roped into volunteering for the next three bake sales no matter how much they explained that they were _very_ close to being made junior partner at their firm, and they just really needed to focus on their cases rather than making burnt brownies.

“Cain, I’ve already asked you to start cleaning up.”

Fortunately, their biweekly family dinner came before they could open the messaging app.

Cain sat on his knees, hunched over his newest creation of crayon scribbles at the dining table. Bea began packing his art supplies back into his plastic box.

“What did you draw today?” they asked.

“It’s a cabin.”

“And those are?” Bea pointed to little circles at the bottom of the page.

“Flowers.”

“Ah. And this?”

“It’s a tent!”

“Why does someone need a tent when they have a cabin?”

Cain didn’t say anything for a second and continued coloring in the sun in the left-hand corner of the page.

“There were too many people, and someone had to sleep outside.”

“Oh.”

“They wanted to because it’s funner to sleep outside.”

“Maybe I should pitch a tent for you tonight.” Bea dug their fingers into Cain’s sides. He squealed and laughed. “Hopefully no wild animals come to take you away and make your their son.”

“Like Mowgli?”

“Like Mowgli.”

Bea picked Cain up and pulled him out of the dining chair. They loved how _tiny_ he was, allowing them to easily pick him up and move them about. He was behind, though his pediatrician had told Bea that there was nothing to worry about. Kids grew at different rates. He was bound to shoot up at any moment no matter if Bea wanted him to or not. He would stop fitting comfortably in their arms, and his little ears would grow and his little nose would grow. He was predicted to be tall with having an absolutely enormous father.

“Go wash up. Your dad’s going to be here soon.”

Bea had heard other parents monologue about how they wanted their kids to stay little forever, and they always rolled their eyes. There was no point in wishing for the inevitable to not happen, they said, but would go home and kiss Cain’s tiny fingers as they put him to bed. It was different because Cain was truly small.

Bea hung up Cain’s newest drawing and set his art supplies aside with their laptop and case files. The dining area resembled something that could be considered “tidy” by someone who had a loose grasp on the meaning of the word.

The front door opened with the key Bea never asked to be returned nearly six years ago. Gabriel came strolling into the dining room, Cain clinging to his leg for a ride, and bags of take-out in his arms.

He was stupidly handsome. His hair was coiffed as usual, and his teeth looked like they had just been whitened.

“Alright, sport, get in your seat,” he said, shaking his leg.

Cain unwrapped himself and climbed back into his chair, swinging his legs back forth as his parents unpacked dinner.

Bea sat down across from Gabriel, serving Cain first and then themselves. They stared at their conservative portions of noodles and rice. Whenever they ate with Gabriel, they lost their appetite. Food took on an appalling smell, and their stomach churned. Everything in front of them was unappealing except for the wine.

“How was school this week?” Gabriel asked, piling a generous portion of food on their plate.

Cain told his stories about Lili and painting and football and maths while Bea choked down a bite of lo mein.

“Do you like football?” Gabriel asked.

Of course the only thing he would catch was the football.

Bea laid their napkin over their plate and poured another glass of wine. At 2 am, they’d wake up starving and they’d eat a bowl of Lucky Charms in the dark kitchen.

“Not really,” Cain said.

“I’m sure you’d like it if you had a proper teacher. If you learned all the theory behind it, I bet you’d be pretty good.”

Cain shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Maybe something else, then. There’s all sorts of things you can do.” Then, the sentence Bea was expecting, directed towards them, “I think we should consider getting Cain into sports.”

Gabriel had dreamed of having a little athlete since before they were married. When Cain was born, he bought him a little baseball onesie (even though Bea told him a dozen times that baseball wasn’t so big in the UK) and a tiny football that was hardly used. Gabriel would pick him up and swing his little legs at the ball, cheering when it rolled into the makeshift goal. But other than that, Cain gravitated towards soft toys and bright colors.

“He’s too small for sports,” Bea said.

“They have sports for small kids. There’s a rugby team starting this summer for 7 to 9-year-olds.”

“I don’t think he’ll catch up with the others by then. I don’t want him playing rugby. He has tiny hands. Cain, show him your hands.”

Cain dropped his fork and held his hands out to Gabriel, palms out and fingers spread apart. Bea couldn’t imagine a rugby ball fitting in them. They were suited only to hold his favorite stuffed animals.

They couldn’t imagine him on a rugby field at all. He was a soft child. He liked picking flowers on Sports Day and drawing cottages in fields. Other boys would break him. Easily.

“Besides,” Bea said, “he’s starting art lessons this summer.”

“They’re painting lessons!” Cain corrected.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Gabriel said, forcing a smile. “I like how you made that executive decision, Bea.”

“I think I’m entitled to executive decisions when I’m the one that would be taking him to all his lessons. Besides, it’s a whole day camp he’ll go to so I can work without having to find a sitter. They’ll feed him and everything.”

Gabriel held up hand in mock-surrender. It was his habit. He would be so chivalrous to end a fight before it even started, pretend that Bea got the last word and would get their way for the sake of avoiding an argument. In reality, Bea realized that they weren’t getting their way at all. Gabriel often went behind their back. Or he simply didn’t care enough to put any additional energy into it. Either way, Bea felt as if they lost.

They had been losing since the day they met him.

“Can I have more juice please?” Cain asked.

Beelzebub grabbed the peach juice that had been separating Gabriel and themselves and refilled Cain’s blue plastic cup. He always had to drink from his blue plastic cup.

“Thank you, zaza.”

That evening, right before Cain was supposed to take a bath, Gabriel kissed him on the cheeks and gave him a big hug. And then he was gone as if he had never visited.

Cain was in his bath a few minutes later, holding his breath so Bea could pour water over his hair—his hair which never seemed to take any water. Just like theirs. They scrubbed his tiny arms and tiny belly and rinsed the shampoo out of his hair.

They fed him cookies with milk and combed his hair and watched him color for a little longer, complimenting his choices.

They tucked him in bed and finally changed out of their clothes, damp from the bath and smelling of Chinese food, and climbed into their own bed with their laptop.

They did it all one their own just as they were used to. But they didn’t mind. They knew that Gabriel would mess something up. He’d tug too hard on Cain’s head. He would obsess over the dirt under Cain’s fingernails. He’d let Cain go to bed with wet hair. Something would go wrong. It was best if Bea did it alone.

They enjoyed being a single parent. They had their system and at night, they had free time to drink wine in, turn on a trashy reality TV show on their laptop, and look at the latest about a certain aunt.

Crowley had sent a few additional texts through the evening. A link to an Instagram page with only a few posts—posts that were very much like what every other 40-something woman made but with snarky captions that made Bea smirk—and a link to a recent Facebook post announcing that Deegan’s niece had just enrolled in a new school and that she was sure that her niece would thrive.

There was also a message following the links.

_Are you ever going to ask how I am?_

Bea didn’t reply. They were sure that Crowley wasn’t going to perish from a stomach bug.

Instead, they returned their attention to the links and then a ping from their phone. An email from a superior.

_Bea,_

_We wanted to let you know that we made a decision on the new office administrator. They’ll be starting this week, so you won’t have to be running your own errands anymore._

_We went with Deegan—_

“Fuck! Yes!”

 _That_ was where they had seen her before. Their own office building. She had been in for an interview only two weeks ago. Bea had walked past and been forced to step in and introduce themselves. They were so focused on getting back to a client (and had always been uncaring of the passing faces in the office), that they hadn’t truly taken in Deegan’s face. But now, they did remember her red hair, worn down, and draped over a black jacket.

“Zaza?”

Bea jumped.

Cain stood in their doorway, cradling a stuffed fly against his chest and looking at Bea with big, mournful eyes. Bea had bought the fly from a museum when Cain was just over a year old. They wandered into the gift shop for anything to calm down their crying toddler who was frustrated at being stuck in a stroller for the end of the trip and anything to ease their growing headache. Bea hadn’t realized that Cain had pulled a fat, round fly with crinkly, blue wings off a shelf until the security censors had began screaming at them on their way out.

They bought the fly and a ridiculously-expensive bottle of water and paracetamol.

It was the last time they went to the museum.

“What is it, kid?”

Bea closed their laptop and set their phone aside. Cain hurried to their side and climbed into their bed.

“Is daddy going to make me play sports?” he asked.

“Not over my dead body.” Bea pulled them under the covers and close to their side. “We don’t believe in athletics. You get all sweaty and bruised. And you’re far too tiny for sports. You have these tiny hands and tiny feet. Tiny legs and arms. You wouldn’t fit in any of the uniforms. I think you stick with drawing.”

“Lili is good at drawing, too.”

“That’s nice.”

Bea ruffled Cain’s hair. He hugged his fly tight to his chest and yawned.

“Actually, kid, I think you should ask Lili if she wants to come over this weekend.”

“But Eden’s birthday party is this weekend.”

Bea sighed. They forgot. That weekend was supposed to be devoted to finding a gift. “Right. Maybe the weekend after that.”

“Okay.”

“I’m working with her aunt now. The aunt that picked her up on Friday.”

“Is she a lawyer?”

“No, she’s going to help around the office. Maybe you’ll see her if you come in with me sometime this week.”

Cain whined. “Will Lili be there, too?”

Bea thought probably not. They could get away with having a kid tucked away in their office, but they couldn’t see superiors being happy with Deegan having Lili by her side for half of the workday.

“Probably not.”

Someday, many, many years in the future, Cain might understand the complexities of childcare. But at the moment, he was falling asleep in pajamas with dinosaurs on them.

Bea plugged headphones into their phone, turned off their light, and watched their trashy TV in the dark with Cain curled against them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to support my writing elsewhere, please check out my Tumblr, Mostweakhamlets!


	5. Seven-ish Years Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Bea meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're uncomfortable with pregnancy, I'd recommend skipping this chapter.

_Seven-ish years ago_

Bea waited in their car until the last possible minute. They didn’t want to go out in the February wind. It would be freezing, and there could be ice. And their balance wasn’t what it used to be five months prior.

They wished Gabriel had gotten the evening off work. Or at least had tried to clear his meetings. He wasn’t supportive in the emotional sense, but he had nice arms to hang onto. He could, at the very least, make it so they weren’t alone in the dark car. Gabriel would have been a gentleman through the night, not only helping them inside but helping them out of their coat and staying by their side.

Five minutes before the class started, Bea stepped out of their car and walked across the dark parking lot and up the stairs of the community center. Expecting parents of various stages of their pregnancy surrounded them, already seated at the collapsible tables set up in a square. Couples sat together on the left side of the square, making conversation with their neighbors. And the seemingly single parents sat on the right.

Bea found a wobbly, cold metal chair on the right next to a red-head. They shed their coat and laid their right hand on the table so that their wedding band was visible. Just to make sure that the people around them knew that they had someone elsewhere.

“Who’re you?”

The red-head had a hand draped over his belly. Bea could still hide their pregnancy under a large jumper, but that didn’t seem to be the case for him. He wore a tight black t-shirt paired with a black jacket that didn’t seem to have any hopes of zipping.

“Bea.”

“I’m Anthony. Crowley.”

Bea wasn’t a huge fan of pregnancy. They had just started getting over their morning sickness phase, but they were still sensitive. They had thrown Gabriel’s aftershave out the window and refused to allow eggs to so much as make their way on to the shopping list. And on top of that, their clothes were shrinking, and their body was beginning to ache.

They didn’t look forward to being where Crowley was.

“Are you here alone?” Crowley asked.

“Just for tonight. My husband had a board meeting.”

“My partner got roped into a church program. I told him I’d get him up to speed tonight. How hard can it be to wrap up a baby in a blanket?”

Bea took a long look at Crowley. Above his sizeable bump was a flat chest (Bea had been told by their doctor to stop binding when their breasts became tender, and they were jealous of the lack of bust Crowley had). And above that was a square jaw—probably even squarer without the pregnancy weight. His hair was cropped close to his face, short at the sides and long on top, accentuating the sharp lines of his face.

Bea found that they could relax. They allowed themselves to sit back in their seat. Their hands fell to their lap.

“How many of these classes have you been to?” they asked. “Is it worth coming back?”

“I’ve been to a few. There was one on car seat safety that was pretty okay. I’d say go to that one when it comes back around. I skipped the one on breastfeeding. Obviously.”

Bea would skip that one as well. Their midwife already promised a private, discreet lesson.

Baby dolls were passed out. They were worn out and probably didn’t fully resemble babies at the beginning of their lives. Bea stared at theirs. They looked like they came from southern Asia and was accompanied by a pink blanket. A hand was loose.

“How far along are you?” Crowley asked.

Bea didn’t want to give anyone that information. It was _their_ pregnancy. They could keep anything secret that they wanted to. But Crowley stared at them with his yellow-ish (hazel? Green?) eyes, and if they were to be roped into conversation, Crowley was their best choice.

“18 weeks.”

“I’m at 29, and I’m ready for this little twerp to get out.”

Bea looked over their doll. It would look nothing like what their son would. They were sure of it even if they hadn’t thought much about what he might come out like. Their only hope was that he wasn’t big before he decided to exit.

“Excuse me.” Bea raised their voice so that the instructor could hear them in the front of the room. They held up their doll. “My child is going to come out with a penis, and this doll is lacking a penis. Is that going to have an effect on the lesson?”

Crowley snorted. The other parents cast dirty, scandalized looks at them.

“It won’t make a difference,” the instructor said, only mildly annoyed. She was a middle-aged woman with greying hair, and she had seen worse than Bea.

“You’re getting a penis baby?” Crowley asked. “I’m getting a vagina baby. Just what my partner wanted.”

“My husband wanted a son. He’s ready to make this child the pinnacle of masculinity. He’s already finding baby football cleats.”

“In 20 years when I hear about the newest FIFA star, I’ll be able to say that I sat next to their… hmm—sorry.”

“I’m going by zaza,” Bea said with a touch of satisfaction that Crowley hadn’t known.

“Oh!” Crowley’s face lit up. “That’s clever.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m just doing ‘daddy.’”

“Okay.”

“My partner is ‘papa.’”

“I didn’t really ask.”

“But you’re the only one here I’d like to talk to.”

“Lucky for me.”

“And I think you’re the only one here that’ll speak to _me.”_

“Oh. I don’t know about that.”

But Bea wasn’t terribly annoyed like they usually were at unsolicited conversation. If only because they had been worried all week about being called a mother and sitting with women who had no intention of understanding that they could be a decent parent.

Crowley just simply allowed Bea to sit next to him and allowed them access to his stream of consciousness. And they supposed that maybe he was so eager to talk because he had no one else. And they _supposed_ that they didn’t either, so maybe it was time to suck it up and do one of those good deeds Gabriel always talked about.

If they did a good deed, they get a pass to do a bad deed. Maybe they would use their pregnancy to cut in line at the coffee shop the next morning. Or snap at someone in the office they had wanted to snap at for weeks and brush it off as “hormones.”

The instructor took her place in front of all of the parents. She smiled at everyone and held up her own baby doll.

“Alright, mummies!” she cheered. “Let’s begin!”

“Not a mummy,” Bea muttered.

“Definitely not a mummy,” Crowley agreed.

They grabbed their babies, more forcefully than the others, and dropped them in the middle of their swaddle blankets.

After 45 minutes of tangling blankets, Bea nearly losing a baby’s hand, and sniggering at the other parents who were foolishly treating the silicone figures as if they were the precious cargo they were all carrying, the class was dismissed. The fake babies were collected. Parents passed Bea and Crowley with tight-lipped smiles and avoiding gazes.

Crowley stood with a little difficulty. Bea considered themselves lucky they were still able to rise from their chair on their own. They watched Crowley place a hand on the table and huff with the effort it took.

He began gathering his jacket as the room slowly emptied, and Bea’s sense of loneliness returned. Gabriel, no doubt, would be out with his co-workers getting a pint of beer in a fancy club. And they would return to a dark house and find something to nibble on and look over work in bed.

They didn’t have much to nibble on at home. And they were hungry.

“God, I’m starving,” Bea said. They were always hungry. “I don’t think my husband is out of his meeting yet.”

“Come get something with me, then. There’s a diner just down the street that’ll throw a little extra on your plate if they can see you’re pregnant.”

Bea ended up ordering a cheeseburger with onion rings with a hand pressed to their bump. They were pleased to see a mountain of onion rings placed on the table in front of them with a glass of soda.

Gabriel had been forcing a strict diet on them. Only the best for the baby—plenty of fruits and vegetables, just enough carbs, nothing processed. Bea had to eat behind Gabriel’s back just to satisfy their cravings for junk food. They ate ice cream, chips, and nachos drowning in cheese in their car and tucked the wrappers and cartons into their neighbor’s rubbish bins.

The onion rings were salty, and the fried outer layer was _exquisite_. It was crispy but not overdone. The soda was syrup-y and cold, and they knew that it wasn’t the _best_ for them, but Gabriel hadn’t allowed soda in the house since he found out Bea was expecting.

“You said you’re having a boy?” Crowley asked, spooning his French onion soup. “Thought about names yet?”

“I like Cain. My husband doesn’t, but I’ll get my way.”

“Are you religious?”

“Not really. I just like the name. I like macabre names. If I ever have another kid, I’m naming them Abel.”

“My husband and I are going with Eden.”

“Gross.”

“Rude.”

“Whatever.”

Bea bit into their burger. Grease dripped onto their hands. It was exactly what they had been craving.

“My partner’s more excited than me,” Crowley said eventually. “He’s bought all these little dresses and booties. He even bought her a bonnet.”

Bea dug a finger into an onion ring and extracted the onion. They wanted the fried batter more than the vegetable.

“My husband is more excited for the baby than I am.”

“Yeah, he’s buying sports equipment already?”

Bea left the slimy onion sliver on the edge of their plate. It was grey and curled over onto itself.

“Just in general he’s more excited about having a kid.”

Crowley shrugged. “I don’t think there’s a certain level of excitement you’re required to be at right now. There’s thousands of women who say that they don’t even feel love when the kid first comes out. I think a lot of the stereotypes about carrying a baby are just absurd. We’re supposed to drop all the other excitement in our lives because we’re growing a baby? We aren’t living to serve one purpose. We’re more than just vessels to carry our young. Besides, I think that people who push their happiness onto the rest of us over all this baby bullshit are over-compensating. They’re trying to prove something. Like, ‘Look at me, I’m doing all my sacrificial, feminine duties right.’ And the rest of us get shamed for having the audacity to say that it doesn’t feel real yet or that I hate not being able to drink. Or they judge you for picking and choosing which of your God-given features you kept.”

Crowley finished his monologue with a sip of his soup.

Bea sat back against the booth and picked up their mutilated fried onion casing with a sense of justification settling over them. It was what they had needed to hear the entire time, and they wouldn’t mind hearing it more in the months to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to read more of my stuff that might not end up on AO3, check out my tumblr (mostweakhamlets)


	6. Wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bea is a little dumb

_Wednesday_

Bea hadn’t spoken more than a few words to Deegan since she started working at the office. Whenever the opportunity arose, they couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t make them sound like an idiot. And they certainly didn’t want Deegan to think of them as an idiot. It wouldn’t be becoming at all.

“Lili told me that Cain’s going to an art camp over the summer,” Deegan had said on Tuesday when they were in the tiny office kitchen together.

Bea poured themselves a cup of lukewarm coffee. “Yeah.”

“Where’s it at? I was thinking of getting Lili involved if they’ll take her still.”

“I’ll, uh, email you the details. I can’t remember where it is right now—not that I don’t know where I’m planning on sending my kid this summer. It’s not like I’m sending him to some sketchy cabins. It’s at a school. Just can’t remember the name of it. But, I’m also not one of _those_ parents, you know? I don’t obsess over him being safe. Last night, I let him eat a chicken nugget off the floor.”

Deegan nodded with an amused smile, and Bea shoved a handful of creamers in their pocket and walked back to their office where they sat in embarrassed silence for twenty minutes.

The thing was that Bea didn’t typically get embarrassed. They didn’t believe in it. There was no point in ever regretting anything they said or did because there was no way to take any of it back. Or, if there was a way to take it back, their pride usually prevented them from doing so.

Being embarrassed wasn’t something Bea did. Not when they spilled coffee over themselves during one of their first court cases. Not when nurses and doctors were looking at their genitals every month when they were with Cain. Not even when they threw up on Cain’s bald head when he was freshly out of the womb and they were nauseous from the anesthetics used in their emergency c-section.

But there they sat, embarrassed, every day that they struggled to speak to Deegan.

The problem was that Deegan seemed so enjoyable to be around, and Bea didn’t meet many people whom they wanted to keep company with. They barely tolerated most people because most people had boring stories, obnoxious social media habits, and thought of themselves with grandeur. But Deegan was interesting in all sorts of ways. She had nice hair, she wore unique outfits, and she was a bit cynical in all the right ways. She even kept a venus fly trap on her desk, and Bea thought that was gloriously macabre for a law office. Especially since she needed to hand feed it insects when the office proved to be a bug-free environment. It sent a shiver down Bea’s spine for a reason they didn’t understand, but they were still intrigued when the hairs were triggered and the mouth clasped shut around its prey in the early stages of suffocation and digestion.

Who wouldn’t want to talk to a woman who kept a carnivorous plant as a desk pet?

_It’s been three days,_ Crowley texted them in the middle of a lunchtime plight. _You need to say something to her. Just ask her if she wants to get coffee while Cain and Lili are at the party this weekend._

Lili’s invitation to Eden’s birthday had been a late addition. The little girl was getting along _very_ well with her new friend group.

_I’ll do it,_ Bea wrote back, _if you tell your boyfriend/not boyfriend/father of your child that he needs to grow a spine and commit._

Crowley responded an hour later, simply stating, _You’re a jerk, and you’re on your own now._

They never asked Crowley to be their wingman, and they didn’t care that he was stepping down from his self-assigned role. Though, it was clear that they needed somebody to navigate the situation for them.

“I need your help,” Deegan said that Wednesday when she had, again, trapped Bea in the kitchen between the coffee pot and kettle. “I don’t know what to have Lili bring Eden on Saturday. You’re closer to the family. What does she like?”

Bea prepped their pockets with sugar and creamer for a speedy getaway. “We got her a fairytale book. She’s a little nerd.”

“Alright.” Deegan plopped her tea bag in her mug. “We can look at books. There’s that one _ancient_ shop not too far from here—”

“A.Z Fell?”

“Yes! Do you think they have anything child-friendly?”

“No. The owner is a pretty big prick, and he only handles rare books. Even if you found something for Eden, he makes buying anything impossible. Only takes cash or check. The prices are far too high. Sometimes he’s not even around. He just hides from customers.”

“Have you been there often?”

“More often than I’d like. The owner is Eden’s dad. I’ve done picks ups and drop offs there.”

Deegan snorted. Bea didn’t know that a _snort_ could be attractive. They assumed their speed-walking position, ready to bolt at a second’s notice.

“So, that’s the gossip?” Deegan asked. “That one of her dads is a dick?”

“Well, both are.”

“I thought you were friends with Crowley?”

“Not willingly.”

“Ah.”

“We met during a pregnancy class, and I’ve been stuck with him since. Besides, he’ll take my kid a few times a week, and I need that.”

“So, you use him?”

“He uses me, too. It’s alright. We have an understanding.”

The silence lasted too long, and Bea felt their cheeks heat up the longer they had to watch Deegan carefully select a pink packet of sugar from the bowl on the counter. It was unfair how Deegan made picking sugar look like something more interesting was happening. Just like her dumb snort.

Bea began to walk out, fed up with her.

“Wait!”

They turned around. “What? I’m busy.”

“Do you want me to take Cain to the party on Saturday? I know you have a busy Monday, and I thought you could use that time to do a little prep.”

“Fine.”

“I can take him back with me, too.”

“Do what you want.”

“I’ll pick him up around 11:30?”

“It only takes five minutes to get to Crowley’s home from mine. Unless you want to emotionally drain Crowley early, you don’t have to show up before, maybe, 11:50.”

“Alright.”

“Although, being a drain on Crowley is on my favorite past times.”

“Let’s just say 11:45.”

“Good enough for me.”

“And Bea?”

“What now? I’m trying to exit. You’re interrupting my exodus.”

“Can I get your phone number? For the kids?”

Bea twisted the toe of their shoe into the linoleum floor and sighed. “If you so desperately need it.”

“I do. What if we get in an accident on the way and Cain gets his arm cut off? I wouldn’t know how to get a hold of you.”

“The hospital will call.”

“What if it takes forever, and you don’t know for hours that your son is armless?”

“Ignorance is bliss.”

“What if Cain dies, and I’m in a coma, so I can’t identify the body? The hospital won’t be able to contact you at all.”

Bea thought, for a moment, that she had a point. But then they furrowed their brow. “How would _you_ contact me if you were in a coma? People in comas don’t usually make phone calls.”

Deegan fell into a fit of giggles. She raised her hand to her chest as the high-pitched cries came out of her. Another obnoxious trait of hers Bea would have to commit to memory completely against their will.

“Can I just have your number?” Deegan asked.

“I’ll email it to you,” Bea mumbled and turned on their heel, out the door.

It would take 45 minutes for them to send the email, to get the wording just right, to make themselves not look like an idiot once again.


	7. Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Party.

_Saturday_

Bea was preparing to collapse onto the sofa with a bag of cheese puffs the second Cain was out the door. They knew that Deegan was being nice so they could have the day to work, but they thought that if they had half an hour to relax and watch YouTube compilations of car accidents, they would be much more productive. It was easier to work with a rested brain and body, and they had their day mapped out from the time Cain left to when he was expected home, every minute to be as enjoyable or productive as possible.

They should have never expected any of it to happen.

“Zira isn’t answering his phone, and I’m panicking.”

“Why is any of this my problem?”

Bea thought about Zira having been in a terrible accident. Maybe having lost a limb. Maybe being on a ventilator somewhere. Or maybe still being in a ditch in the middle of London where no one would find him for days. Though, London wasn’t known for the ditches that cars drive into.

“Because I have a feeling that he’s losing track of time, and I’m going to be stuck on my own with a house full of kids today, and I can’t cope with that, Bea.”

Oh. No horrifying accidents then. Losing track of time did seem more probable than a car accident for a man who didn’t even drive.

“You shouldn’t have let him go! I told you that he’s just trying to dump all of the responsibilities onto you.”

“He’s not. I know he’s not. He’s just… forgetful.”

“He forgets his own child’s birthday party?”

“Yes.”

“I still don’t know why this is my problem.”

“I need you here.”

“No.”

“Bea, _please_. I need another adult. I’ll feed you while you’re here.”

“I can feed myself.”

“If you stay, I’ll watch Cain after school for a week. I’ll pick him up and everything.”

Bea looked at their family size bag of unopened cheese puffs. They sat on the counter, waiting to be opened. Waiting for Bea to smell that burst of processed air that would rush forth into their face. Waiting for Bea to have the first handfuls before they went stale and soggy.

Bea thought about the pizza and a variety of junk food Crowley was certainly going to have for the kids and the handfuls they could grab through the afternoon. Gooey pizza did sound more appealing than the leftover Thai they had scheduled for themselves in an hour.

And not having to take time out of work to pick up Cain and watch him for an entire week?

“Two weeks,” they said.

“Week and a half.”

“Week and a half, and the next time there’s a school holiday, you get Cain all day.”

There was a pause.

“Fine.”

“I’ll be there when I get there.”

“Could you come—”

Bea hung up.

They weren’t going to change. Their sweatpants and t-shirt were there to stay, and they were going to slip on their Crocs before leaving the house. Crowley didn’t deserve Bea in real trousers.

“Cain, are you ready?” they called up the stairs. “Deegan will be here any minute.”

Cain’s tiny feet pattered around as an answer. Bea could follow the sound from his bedroom to the bathroom and to his bedroom again. Then, the boy appeared at the top of the stairs, grabbing the spindles of the railing and walking down one step at a time.

“Sit down. Let me help you with your shoes,” Bea said.

Cain plopped down on the last few steps and kicked his dinosaur-socked feet out. Bea shoved his shoes on, thinking that it was really time to start drilling on the lace-tying lessons. It took forever for Cain to successfully tie a bow on each shoe, and Bea simply didn’t have the patience that day.

Crowley was probably going to ask for help laying out snacks and distributing food. It would mean little fingers grabbing at them which was very much less than pleasant for Bea. Even if 10 of those little fingers belonged to them.

Just as they were stepping into their own crocs and jacket, the bell rang, followed by a knock.

 _You only need to do one. I’m not deaf,_ Bea thought.

“Hi, Deegan! Change of plans! I’m joining for the day. Were you planning on staying at the party?” Bea grabbed Cain’s hand and the gift bag and began shouldering their way out the door. “Oh, it’s chilly out, isn’t it? Odd for April, isn’t it?”

“You’re coming?” Deegan asked, smiling as always. If Bea wasn’t so focused on being told to join the party last minute, they would have noticed how pretty Deegan looked. How her hair was braided and her high-waisted mom jeans. “That’s great, but I can take care of the kids. I was already planning on staying. Crowley offered me lunch.”

“He made me the same offer, and I haven’t done any shopping this week.” Bea helped Cain into the backseat of Deegan’s car—a clunky thing appropriate for someone who was assuming the role of a mother. They got into the passenger seat. “And his not-boyfriend-boyfriend is probably going to be a no-show, so he needs extra help.”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah. I told him not to worry. I’d come with you and the kids and help him sort anything out.”

“But you have so much work to do.”

“I know, but I can’t let him deal with a household of kids when he’s down an adult.” Bea propped their knees up on the dashboard. “He also offered to watch Cain for two weeks, and I can’t turn down an offer like that.”

“Oh.”

“Also, I know he’s getting pizza for the kids, and I didn’t have solid lunch plans.”

“Oh!”

Crowley was more than pleased to see Bea with Deegan. He led them inside while the kids ran up to Eden, giving her their gift bags and running off to play with her newest toys.

“Thanks for staying,” Crowley said. He looked between them, a little smiling growing. “Did you come here together?”

“What can we say? We care about the environment.”

“Bea, you litter on a daily basis.”

“Littering isn’t that bad. I’ve told you before that animals are evolving around it.”

“I don’t think that’s true—”

Bea pushed past Crowley and led themselves into the apartment. They could understand the stress. The apartment wasn’t small by any means. In fact, it was roughly the size of a modest house. It was enviable but something someone could only buy if they came from generations of wealth. Which Crowley did.

Deegan trailed behind as she shed her jacket and boots.

“Are the other three here yet?” Bea asked.

“No.” The door bell rang. “Yes.”

Bea answered. Hastur and Ligur stood in front of them, three kids ready to take off at the sight of their friends, and a toddler in Hastur’s arms.

“Are you staying? Or is this a drop off?” Bea asked.

“Drop off.”

“Wrong! Come on in, kids.”

“No, we don’t really want to stay.”

“There’s going to be some _grand_ gossip about Crowley’s not-boyfriend-boyfriend at some point today, and that seems like something you’d both like to be part of. Besides, you two can help around.”

Hastur looked at Ligur, who shrugged and said, “Fine.”

“I’m right here,” Crowley said. “I can hear all of this.”

“Also, you haven’t met Deegan yet,” Bea said. “And it’d be rude not to introduce yourself to the newest guardian at school.”

“Since when do you care about manners?” Hastur asked.

“Since a father is a no-show and you brought triplets.”

Ligur poked his head in to look at Crowley. “Zira isn’t here?”

Crowley crossed his arms and looked away. Before anyone else could say anything, Eden ran into the room to greet her newest guests and pulled them into another room to include them in whatever game was happening beyond the adults’ supervision.

* * *

“So, he’s really not showing up?” Ligur asked. He held a tiny potato chip to his toddler’s mouth (whose name Bea couldn’t remember and would need to snoop around Facebook for) for her nibble on. Bea could never understand how they managed to adopt so many kids. They were exhausted after taking care of only one kid.

“Not that I know of. He said he’d be here by now.” Crowley looked at his phone. His last five text messages hadn’t been read.

The kids played in front of them, running around the apartment and squealing. It gave Bea an awful headache to see their son, usually so quiet and polite, bouncing off the walls from his high sugar-intake. It would take hours to wear him out.

“I brought you a piece of cake.” Deegan sat down next to them with two colorful paper plates. “I made sure it had a rose on it.”

The cake had been beautiful, with thick globs of icing in the shape of flowers lining it. The inside was marble, which Bea had to give props to Crowley for. Any kid would be lucky to have that sort of cake at a party.

Bea scooped a bite of icing up with their plastic fork, trying not to pay attention to how Deegan watched. As the party went on, they realized that they were getting her undivided attention. And that wasn’t something they could easily handle.

“You really like sweets, don’t you?” Deegan asked.

“What of it?”

“I was just observing.”

“Is it illegal to enjoy sweets in adulthood?”

“I said I was just observing.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“I don’t, but it is nice to be able to get you your ideal slice of cake without having to ask.”

Bea shoved more cake into their mouth. It was moist and sweet and held together well. They mashed it against the roof of their mouth. Deegan continued to watch.

“Can you two stop flirting for a second?” Crowley asked.

Bea glared and thought about a snarky, “no” as response. But then, they didn’t want to admit to anything more than platonic happening on the sofa.

“Look at your kids.” Crowley waved his hand towards them.

“Cain! Stop that!”

Cain held a brand new black marker in his hand and was carefully drawing whiskers onto Lili’s cheeks. “I’m doing face paint!” he said.

The other four were waiting patiently for their turn.

“That’s not face paint, Cain. That’s a marker you’re using.”

“It’ll wash off,” Deegan said. “It’s just a kid’s marker. They’re made knowing kids are going to drawing all over themselves.”

“No more face painting please,” Crowley said.

“But daddy—”

“Eden, I said no.”

But the “no” lacked any sort of authority when Crowley was preoccupied with his phone again. Bea, not particularly caring what the kids did short of killing one another, went back to their cake.

“When he shows up, what are you going to do?” Bea asked.

“I’ll stay calm for the kids,” Crowley said. “And then later, I’ll lecture him.”

“You could let me lecture him.”

“You don’t lecture people, you break the Geneva Conventions.”

“I know my way around the law.”

Their cake was gone. It was a shame. Now they had to think of something else to do with their hands and their mouth at all times that didn’t maket them look so stupid.

“So,” Bea asked Deegan. “Did you like the pizza?”

“What?”

Crowley’s phone began emitting long, drawn out buzzes while a picture of Aziraphale popped onto the screen. It only lasted for one run before Crowley picked it up.

“You bastard, where are you? Did you forget how phones work for two hours?”

“So much for being calm,” Bea said. “I think it’s time to take the kids home.”

“Let me grab out jackets,” Deegan said with a nod.

“I think Vine is getting tired,” Ligur said, as his very much not tired child wiggled on his lap.

“Vine! That’s her name.” Bea shrugged on their jacket as Deegan tossed it at them. “Why did I think it started with an A? Cain, come on, we’re heading out.”

“Lili, say goodbye!”

Bea herded the kids towards the door, and they began the process of putting on tiny shoes and tiny jackets.

“Do you want to stop for coffee somewhere?” Bea asked, not thinking much about the implications of asking someone if they’d like to get coffee. “The sugar made me feel bleh.”

Deegan smiled. “I’d love to!”

And she was out the door, leading the kids to the car.

“Shit.”


	8. Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale is in some trouble.

_Saturday_

Crowley had told Eden to take a bath after his phone call with Zira. She had whined and begged for five minutes to play with her new toys, but Crowley grabbed her from under her arms and carried her into the bathroom himself.

“It’s not even bedtime,” she said. “I’ll just get dirty again.”

“That’s a problem for future us. Use as much bubble bath as you want.”

Her water was drawn with a mountain of foam, and Crowley sat across from the door right in time for Zira to walk in.

He smiled sheepishly as he hovered in the doorway, but his smile faded slowly when Crowley crossed his arms and tilted his head.

“I’m sorry,” Zira said.

“I don’t ask you for a lot.”

Zira sat down, wringing his hands. He spoke quietly. Cautiously. “Can I try to explain what happened?”

“Not until I lecture you.”

“Alright.”

“Eden deserves better than a father who breaks simple promises. And _I_ deserve better than a co-parent who doesn’t show up to a birthday party when I have half a dozen kids here. Why is a luncheon more important than us?”

“It’s not. I lost track of time, and there was a speaker that I didn’t know about. No one told me that it was going to be so long.”

“You couldn’t have at least called?”

“It would have been rude if I were on my phone. I didn’t get a chance to call until I was leaving.”

“There wasn’t a chance to excuse yourself for five minutes?”

“Dear—”

Crowley got to his feet and dragged his hands through his hair. His fingers caught on dried cake icing and sticky ice cream. It was revolting, and he realized there was more to the mess on his shirt. He longed to change out of his outfit and shower. Every inch of him felt gross as if the grease from the pizza and the sugar of the cake and ice cream clung onto his skin.

He wanted an hour of silence and to scrub everything sticky off of his body.

“I find it _really_ hard to believe that you would have been shunned if you had stepped out to make a call to your family,” he said. “I don’t believe that all those people you were with today don’t have kids of their own and wouldn’t understand you leaving early.”

“I know. And I’m _very_ sorry about all of this. I made a mistake—many mistakes. I should have stepped out to call. I should have left early.”

“You should have!”

Zira rubbed his palms back and forth against his knees. He rocked forward slightly. “If we’re agreeing, why are we still arguing?”

“Because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened! And I know it won’t be the last. You always have your own plan for what you want to do with Eden. You let her break curfew, you don’t make her eat her vegetables, you don’t make her comb her hair. You always take the easy way out. You don’t put up any resistance to her, and then you don’t try to balance your work life and parenting life.”

“I’m not taking the easy way out with her.”

“You do. You do, Zira. And I’m always stuck being the bad guy because I’m the only one that tells her no. And I was the only one of us that was at her party today trying to keep kids from burning my apartment down while trying to hunt down my child’s father. It feels like I’m being stuck with all the shit jobs with her.”

“You barely even let me do the shit jobs. You always make it seem like I look after her because I have to not because I want to. You act like I think it’s a chore.”

“Because you do shit like this! Because the things you _really_ need to do for her always get the backseat to your job or your luncheons or your meetings. You have an actual child, Zira. You have someone who needs more than coddling. You have to start doing the shit you really don’t want to do.”

Zira kept his mouth closed and looked past Crowley. In the threshold between the living room and the hallway, Eden stood in her fluffy, red bathrobe. She leaned into the wall, partially hiding herself from view.

Crowley turned around. His shoulders lost the tension they had been carrying all day. Sweat was cooling on the back of his neck. His hands shook. He felt even grosser than before.

“Were we being loud?” he asked.

Eden nodded. She looked miserable with her wet hair hanging in her frowning face.

“We’re sorry,” Zira said. “We were having a little… disagreement.”

“About me?”

“Oh, dear. No.”

Crowley held his arm out and motioned her forward. He led her to the sofa and sat her down in between him and Zira. She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. Her cheeks were flushing. Crowley stroked one with his knuckle. She was as soft as she was when she was a baby. When Crowley would cradle her against his chest, relishing in the tiny creature he was protecting and keeping warm.

“We’re sorry you had to hear all of that,” Crowley said.

His heart broke the second he saw tears begin to roll down her cheeks. The dizzying anger he felt minutes ago was gone. He wanted to cry with her.

“What are the shit jobs you get with me?” she asked.

“Eden…”

What an awful thing to have said, Crowley thought. What an awful thing to have argued about while she was still home and at risk of hearing every word. How unloved a child must feel to learn that their involuntary existence comes with bad moments for the people raising them.

“There are none,” Zira said. “There’s nothing about raising you that’s doesn’t make us the happiest parents in the world.”

“I promise I’ll start eating my vegetables, and I won’t complain about it,” Eden said. “I won’t ask to stay up late anymore.”

“No, don’t say that,” Crowley said. “We don’t want you to feel guilty for being a kid. You can be as stubborn about your vegetables and bedtime as you’d like.”

“I think what your dad was trying to tell me is that I need to make sure you’re doing all those tedious things when you’re with me.”

“What does tedious mean?” Eden asked.

“It’s all the things we don’t like to do but have to do anyway. Like eating vegetables or brushing our hair. It keeps you healthy, but we don’t really enjoy it, do we?”

Eden nodded. “Will you stop fighting if I do all of that?”

Zira pulled her onto his lap. Crowley laid his hand on her knee.

“You’re not the reason we’re fighting—and you never will be,” Zira said.

“Then why are you fighting?”

“Because we’re stubborn,” Crowley said. “And we have different ideas of what the other should be doing. And rather than just talk about it, we let it make us angry. That’s when we have fights.”

“But it’s never your fault. Okay?” Zira said.

Eden nodded.

“Good.” Zira kissed the top of her head. “Why don’t you let daddy comb your hair for you and you can tell me all about your party.”

Eden nodded again and took Crowley’s hand to help her down from Zira’s lap.

The walk to her room was silent. Crowley settled her on her bed and began combing her hair, working out the tangles. He suspected that she didn’t wash her hair, but he wouldn’t say anything. Not after believing that she was the cause of her parents’ argument.

“We love you a lot,” Crowley said. “Do you know that?”

“Yeah.”

There were a thousand things that Crowley wanted to do to make sure that Eden knew that she was loved. He wanted to hold her for hours, cuddle her, plait her hair, give her more ice cream, take her out to play, patch up all of her old, stuffed toys, mend her old books, read to her, and kiss her cheeks over and over. But he was ultimately frozen and could only move the comb through her hair.

“But why didn’t papa come to the party? He missed everything.”

Crowley worked on a little knot. “He was busy. He didn’t realize his meeting was going to take so long. But he’s going to make it up to you. He told me he promises.”

“Okay.”

He continued moving the cimb through her hair. Top to bottom. Barely looking at his work.


	9. Tuesday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for pregnancy and troublesome labor.

_Tuesday_

A window would need to be opened.

A window would need to be opened or Bea would continue vomiting in their trash bin.

They held a tissue to their nose, trying to block out the smell. Deegan stood at a safe distance, grimacing and clutching a container of antibacterial wipes. She had been making light conversation about the newest gossip in celebrity tabloids when Bea doubled over their bin with a heave. She ran out to grab the cleaning supplies at her desk, but she didn’t make it further than a step back into Bea’s office before the fear of catching the dreaded stomach bug stopped her from moving forward.

“It’s in my nose,” Bea whined.

“Should I cancel your meetings for today?” Deegan asked.

“Obviously.”

Bea would have to do a thorough investigation of who they got the virus from. Cain must have brought it home from school after a snot-nosed brat coughed on him or shared a milk carton with him. They didn’t like thinking about their son being contaminated by the germs of a gross child who probably had juice stains around their mouth.

Or contaminated by his own zaza.

They could always send Cain off to Gabriel while they quarantined. He would have to come with a letter explaining to Gabriel that he needed fed three times a day and bathed once.

“Can you open that window?” Bea asked.

Deegan did so and cautiously approached Bea’s desk with her wipes. “Sit up.”

There was a faint breath of wind that hit Bea’s face. It was a touch refreshing and then it died. They closed their eyes.

They felt truly awful. They were hot and achy, and their stomach cramped. It was as if they were some toy meant for a child to rip them apart and then put them back together with only the vaguest knowledge of human anatomy. Even if their organs were in the right place now, they still felt violated. Like things had been mixed up at once point in the night and their large intestine was shoved where their liver was supposed to go for a minute.

Deegan’s hand brushed their forehead and then settled there. Bea looked up at her, confused.

“You should go home,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re feverish. You should go home.”

Her hand felt nice. It was cool and dry while their brow was hot and sweaty. It was, dare Bea think, tender. And appreciated.

Parts of their body that they hadn’t used in a while began fluttering, and their nausea increased. Their fever rose.

No one had felt their forehead for fever since they were six. Their mother stopped once they became “too old,” and Gabriel never showed such affection. No matter what, Gabriel’s affection only came in the form of a credit card with no limit, a new bag, a very expensive meal. Never any gentle fingers running through their hair or down their back. And Bea had always told themselves that they didn’t need that sort of love. They were better off with gifts than they were with interlaced hands, soft kisses, tangled legs and arms.

Deegan pulled her hand away. “I’ll take care of everything here. I can order flu medicine to be delivered to your house if you’d like.”

“No. Don’t.”

It felt like a step too far. If Deegan took care of them to that extent, Bea wouldn’t be able to shake the fact that she _cared_ about them. That their relationship was officially beyond carpools and office chatter and the occasional shared lunch.

“Let me at least disinfect your office.”

“Fine.”

“And I’ll pick up Cain today.”

Bea stood and grabbed their jacket. They weren’t in a position to turn that offer down. Not unless they wanted to be heaving over the other parents outside the gates of the school. “Thanks.”

Deegan was already pulling out a wipe and scrubbing Bea’s desk. She smiled at them as they walked out, but she didn’t say anything. Bea wanted to thank them again, but the once was already more than they usually gave people. It was a foreign word on their tongue.

In their car, they shivered until warm air blasted through the vents and heaved out their window for a moment before pulling themselves together. Stuck and red lights and lunch traffic, they focused on getting home and into sweatpants and laying down with shit reality TV on in the background. And then they could try to exert energy towards sending bad omens to whatever child got them sick. If they thought about it hard enough, they could manifest something. A potty accident. A broken crayon. Crumbly biscuits that mostly ended up on the floor and their clothes rather than in their mouth.

When they pulled in front of their house, they saw a white paper bag sitting on their doorstep. They picked it up with little thought and opened it as they shouldered the door open. Inside was a box of mint tea, ginger sweets, and an extra-large bottle of paracetamol. A receipt was taped to the front with delivery instructions and a note.

_I know you said no, but I ordered a few things anyway. I thought that you’d regret turning down my offer once you were at home and comfortable. Take care!_

Fluttering feelings started up again. They wanted to shove the tea, ginger, and pills somewhere so they would never have to see them ever again. Some far corner of their cupboard. Buried under other tea and instant coffee and an empty biscuit tin. But they left them on the counter and turned on the kettle for tea.

Bea tore the receipt off of the bag. They thought about throwing it away and went so far as to crumple it up. But then they thought better of it. They smoothed it out and hung it on the fridge. Just as a reminder of how much they owed Deegan. Nothing more than that.

* * *

Bea had screamed at Gabriel the entire drive to the hospital. They insisted that they could feel the baby wiggling further and further down and if they had to have their son in their car, they would serve Gabriel divorce papers before sunrise. It was his fault for waiting so long to take them (though, Gabriel had followed doctors’ orders to a T), and if they had to deliver anywhere but a private room with nurses and their midwife, they would make sure he suffered.

“Something’s wrong,” Bea said as Gabriel helped them through the front doors and again when nurses flocked to their side.

“It’ll be alright,” the nurses cooed. “We’ll get you and baby checked out.”

Bea braced their hands on the side of their bed as another contraction tore through their body. Their legs shook. Their hips were on fire. And there was the feeling of something, something little, making its way down to their vagina. They imagined a tiny foot ready to pop out, their son backward and trying to make his entrance with as much trauma to the both of them as possible.

“Can you help them get changed into a gown?”

A large, pink gown was shoved at Gabriel. Bea threw off their sweatshirt and sweatpants and balanced against Gabriel’s shoulders to get their pants off.

They weren’t much of a crier, but they were close to tears when everyone around them moved calmly and slowly.

“Something’s wrong,” Bea said again, their throat burning from holding in a sob. “I can feel it. I need help.”

The nurses helped them onto the bed. Bea moved carefully. They didn’t want the baby’s foot being crushed if it was already on its way out.

Their legs were propped up, and a nurse disappeared between them for only a second. He resurfaced with a straight face. Bea didn’t like straight faces in hospitals. They were always bad.

“The cord prolapsed,” he said. “Call the OR.”

The room wasn’t calm anymore. Nurses left and entered in swarms. Machines and stands were pushed out of the way for a stretcher. They were pushed onto a new mattress before they were even aware of the pairs of hands on them.

“What does that mean?” Bea asked.

“We need you on your hands and knees.”

Bea was being flipped around in the most uncomfortable position they had ever known. Their belly brushed the bed and left no room for their knees to tuck under themself. Their hips were raised, leaving their rear up in the air with no dignity but a blanket a nurse draped over them. Their head was pressed against their pillows. They could barely see Gabriel, in the corner of the room, hands shoved in his pockets and eyebrows raised. It would be the only time Bea would see him so concerned.

“Right now,” the nurse said, bending down to be in their line of vision. He had kind eyes, “the umbilical cord is already in your cervix ahead of your baby, and it might be cutting off your baby’s oxygen.”

Bea couldn’t even imagine what that looked like. But now they were certain that something _had_ wiggled down to their vagina and was creeping its way out of the canal. But it was a twisted, evil thing. Trying to kill their baby instead of keep it safe.

“We’ll do a c-section to get the baby out as quick as we can.”

Pregnancy blogs and magazines and other parents in classes always mentioned a special connection felt between the parent and the baby before it was born. Everyone bonded over the first flutters of hands and feet kicking. Over the first weeks of having a bump. Over listening to heartbeats and looking at ultrasounds.

Bea never understood how someone could feel attached to something that was still buried, that couldn’t be seen or heard. As far as they were concern, the baby was no more than an extension of an organ. No more than a parasite. That is, if parasites were wanted and cared for and nourished.

They said so over and over. It never felt like a _baby_ in the there. They couldn’t envision themselves cradling the blob of flesh and underdeveloped limbs and calling it “son.”

Crowley, with his new baby already at home, had said that there was nothing like holding your child when they were finally out. Whatever connection he felt before paled in comparison to having his daughter actually _there_ in her crib, taking her bottle, finally in the little clothes his partner had hoarded for months. He told Bea, as they balanced Eden on their inconveient bump, that he was certain that the stories people told before they held their babies were for attention and were nothing more than bullshit. They were fantasies to get parents to click on blogs and buy whatever dumb gimmicks were out there. Because if parents knew they only had nine months to feel the wonderful love of growing a child and performing miracles with their body, they would rush to do anything to make sure every minute counted.

“Just don’t listen to anyone who brags about how much they love pregnancy and how it’s the most special days you’ll have with your kid,” he said. “Because those are the bitches with a breeding fetish, and we can’t trust anything they say.”

Bea was sure that he said that just to make them feel better. They saw the way his hand was pressed to his belly in the weeks before Eden’s birth.

Bea was wheeled out of their private room and through the halls of the hospital.

Crowley had sent them a picture of Eden when she first came out. She was in a clear, plastic, hospital crib with a tag on her belly button and around her wrist. Bea had told Crowley that she was making an ugly face and that she looked like a raisin. Crowley had said that he loved his little raisin and sent another picture of her a couple of weeks later in a dress and bonnet on their first family walk. She was obnoxiously cute by then, her wrinkles smoothed out into plump rolls.

“What’s happening?” Bea asked the sterile, steel room they were laid in. They were on their back now.

“Your ob-gyn isn’t here yet.” A nurse tucked a loose lock of their hair into a paper cap. “But we have another surgeon in the building who’s scrubbing right now. It’ll only be a minute.”

“Do I have to be awake?”

Bea knew how c-sections worked. The parent was always awake with only a curtain over their chest.

“Since there wasn’t any time to get you an epidural, we’ll put you under. You’ll be asleep for the whole thing.” The nurse’s eyes wrinkled. Under her mask, she was smiling. “We’re going to take care of you two.”

Needles were pricked into their hand.

The injustice of the situation settled on them. They didn’t love their pregnancy. They had been totally neutral about it all. Their chance to hold their baby, wriggling and crying and fresh out of the womb, had been taken. And perhaps their future chances of holding their baby, dressing it up, talking it on walks, were lessening with every second.

_I didn’t get a chance to love him._

A mask was laid over their mouth and nose, effectively silencing them from asking the hundreds of questions they had. A nurse, out of their vision, squeezed their shoulder. Blue gowns and white gloves floated around them until they were too tired to keep their eyes open. The sounds of stainless steel clanking together and conversation about scalpels and numbers faded.

When they woke up, they were in a new bed with a new ceiling to stare at. They felt empty and heavy and sore and detached from their body. Their stomach churned, and they couldn’t move.

“Bea?” A nurse, a new one from the supposed never-ending rotation of them, leaned over them. “Are you awake?”

They blinked up at her. They tried to nod, though they weren’t sure if they achieved it.

“Do you want to see your little one?”

Little one? Oh right. Bea had been pregnant. For nine months. They forgot. It didn’t feel like anything significant had happened like a child being pulled from their body.

How anti-climatic.

The room around them nearly came into focus. It was bland and white. Still fuzzy around the edges and looked to stretch out into a long tunnel. But when they turned their head to the right, they saw Gabriel and in his arms, the baby in a blue and white blanket. He even had a little, matching hat.

“Isn’t he handsome?” Gabriel asked.

He looked tired. Bea didn’t know if they ever saw him tired. Maybe drowsy. But they never saw his hair and clothes disheveled the way that they were or dark smudges under his eyes. He smiled, though, and his eyes were bright.

“He looks like a raisin,” Bea said.

Their voice cracked. They tried clearing it.

“A handsome raisin,” the nurse said. “Do you want to hold him?”

There was no time to answer before Gabriel was by their side, and the nurse was sitting them up and moving their arms for them. They had no control over their body. Whatever drugs they had pumped them full of were still very much doing their job.

The baby was laid in their arms. His face was scrunched up. Eyes closed. He looked like a pug.

Bea couldn’t breathe. They couldn’t feel the baby pressed against their chest. They couldn’t _feel_ anything towards him. Nothing about his appearance was striking, and nothing about his presence was particularly exciting.

Briefly, they thought that that must have been what Crowley told them about. How parents don’t always love their children the second they meet. They thought that the growing pain in their stomach and the dizziness was grief for that—their body physically rejecting parental feelings.

And then they realized that it was just an upset stomach when a small stream of bile landed on their gown and the tiny hat on the tiny head.

The mortification of throwing up on their own baby didn’t have a chance to set in. They were laid back in bed with a towel wiping them clean and reassured that a little nausea was normal after surgery.

The baby mysteriously disappeared from their arms and the realm of existence Bea was on.

Voices faded again. The room ceased to exist when they closed their eyes.

They were sound asleep for another three hours until the pain in their uterus and the shrieking cries of the baby woke them up. Gabriel dutifully picked the baby up and held him close to his chest, a hand under his little head. Bea watched and without much thought, held out their arms.

Gabriel handed him over with a half-asleep comment about finding a nurse for another bottle of formula.

And Bea and the baby were alone, curled into one another with only his cries between them.

“Cain?” Bea asked. “Did your dad let you be Cain? Or did he name you something else when I was asleep?”

The baby raised his fists to his wrinkled, red face. His cries reached a new pitch. Bea took his left hand between their thumb and forefinger. It was like a marshmallow. Bea turned the plastic bracelet on his wrist around, carefully so they wouldn’t hurt him, and looked at the name printed in all capital letters.

CAIN

“Thank God.”

It was Cain they were holding. Not the Michael or the James that Gabriel wanted. He was Cain. _Bea’s_ Cain. The Cain they had been with for every second of every day for nine months. Cain. An actual person. An actual person with an independent heartbeat and fingers and chunky arms.

They ran their hand over his head. He had black hair sticking up in every direction. Bea imagined their hair looked the exact same, and they couldn’t care.

Whatever they looked like for Cain, they could accept it.


	10. Wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley has a rough day

_Wednesday_

Crowley tapped Gabriel on the shoulder, using a little more force behind his bony finger than was necessary. But he lived to irk Gabriel on the rare occasions they crossed, and when he saw that familiar build in a familiar gray suit outside the school gates, he couldn’t resist.

“Oh,” Gabriel said when he turned around and looked down to see Crowley. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon to you, too. Bea not doing pick up today?”

“No, they’re a bit ill.”

It was the first Crowley had heard about this illness. He crossed his arms. “Is it the stomach bug going around?”

“Not sure.”

“Aw, Gabe, don’t pretend you don’t want to talk to me. Our kids are best friends.” Crowley waited for a response, but Gabriel turned around to face the school gates, he continued with confidence in his ability to ramble for minutes on end. “Eden and I had that bug the other week. I guess Bea caught the tail end of it. I bet most of the school is immune to it by now. How’s Cain? He hasn’t been sick, has he?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Who knows where it came from, then. Maybe someone in Bea’s office had it—or maybe a client. I always told Bea that their immune system was going to be shit if they didn’t start sleeping more and cut out some processed foods. But they really want that promotion, and they won’t stop working for it. I don’t think they’ve slept more than a few hours every night since they heard it was on the table. They’d probably be fine with this virus if they slept more. Well, then again, I was down for a few days with it. They must be loving this rest, they’re getting, though. So long as they didn’t bring work home with them. Probably did, the cunt.”

The doors to the school opened and kids flooded out. The smallest kids ran forward first, followed by kids who weren’t _as_ small but still quite tiny.

“As much as I love our conversations,” Gabriel said, “I see Cain, and we have to go.”

Cain ran forward to the gates with Eden and Lili at his sides. He reached up for Gabriel, whose demeanor quickly changed from an annoyed scowl to a toothy smile. He grabbed Cain and plopped him onto his hip. Crowley was a little jealous that he could still hold Cain like that. Eden was sprouting up every day, and Crowley hadn’t been able to comfortably carry her in a year. Her legs were too long to wrap around his non-existent hips now, and she was just a touch too heavy for his aging back.

Deegan approached with a cautious smile. She took Lili’s hand and waved at Crowley.

“Going home with someone new, Cain?”

“Oh, you two must not have met yet,” Crowley said. He grinned. _This_ was something he was glad he could see. “This is Gabriel, Cain’s father and Bea’s ex-husband. And this, Gabriel, is Deegan. She works with Bea now, and they’re, oh, what should we call you two?”

“We’re friends,” Deegan quickly said. Her smile was forced now, and Crowley could see the tension in her body.

“Just friends?” Crowley asked.

Gabriel, too, had a forced smile. Crowley was itching to grab his phone and tell Zira all about how he made the asshole sweat. He was going to memorize every blink and shrug of Gabriel’s as he pieced together that his ex was moving on. What Crowley would give to be inside Gabriel’s mind. To witness the mental gymnastics he was surely going through to try to comprehend that Bea’s romantic life might have begun with Gabriel but surely wasn’t going to end with him.

“Just friends,” Deegan said.

“Well, Bea hasn’t mentioned much about you, so forgive me for this being our first meeting,” Gabriel said.

“They don’t mention you much, either.” Deegan ruffled Cain’s hair. “And it’s funny. Cain looks exactly like them. I didn’t recognize you two as father and son at all.”

Crowley noted the slight rise in Gabriel’s eyebrow. All those years of grooming Cain to be just like him. Deegan probably didn’t even realize how fatal of a blow she delivered.

“Let’s go, Eden,” Crowley said, taking her hand. “Your papa said he has your birthday gift waiting at his flat.”

The kids waved goodbye to one another before their parents split off in their own directions.

Eden chattered about her day for a minute began diving into guesses about what her gift would be. Her second gift, really. Zira had already given her a beginner’s terrarium set on her actual birthday but had said only the night before that he had come across something she would love.

“Let me spoil her a little bit this year,” Zira told Crowley over the phone. “To make up for this weekend.”

And it proved Crowley’s point. That Zira used gifts far too much to make up for small incidents. But he didn’t argue. He would let it slide once more.

“Do you know what papa got me?” Eden asked.

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. “He said he saw something that he just had to get you.”

Eden hummed and kicked her legs. Crowley supposed that if they were going to the flat above his bookshop, it would be book-related. Something a fellow dealer dropped off and was laying in a temperature-controlled room. Zira always talked about how precious books were. They needed to be kept in the perfect environment, and that was why he was always so hesitant to sell his books to just anyone.

Zira could talk about his books for hours, and Crowley had always loved it. But their conversations over the years withered from books, plants, music, and movies to toys, playdate schedules, and school work.

Maybe if he did purchase a book for Eden, he would launch into explanations of humidity and gloves versus no gloves. Crowley could imagine him sitting her on her lap and gently instructing her as she opened the book, one arm wrapped around her middle and the other guiding her hand around the pages.

 _That_ would be a good gift as an apology. It would be Zira sharing his hobby and spending quality time with her. Not just putting a price tag on his guilt.

Crowley helped Eden out of the car, trying to control the sappy smile on his face. Zira met them at the front door of his bookshop with a wide grin and locked the door behind them.

“Your gift is right upstairs,” he said. “The sooner we get to it, the better.”

“What is it?” Eden asked.

“You’ll just have to see.”

Eden ran through the shop and to the spiral staircase in the back. Crowley and Zira fell back and took their time.

“I hope you don’t mind what I got her,” Zira said, rubbing his hand. He stopped at the staircase and stepped aside for Crowley to take the lead.

“I’m sure I won’t.” Crowley leaned in to kiss his cheek which blushed under his lips. “It’s for her birthday, and I’m okay with anything that makes her happy.”

Maybe it wasn’t a book he got her. Or at least a book Zira was comfortable leaving in his shop. But it would be fine whatever it was.

Crowley heard Eden screaming with joy and then, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he heard equally excited barking.

Zira didn’t.

He took the steps two at a time and stood on the landing outside Zira’s open front door. Eden sat on her knees. A golden retriever puppy jumped around her, his paws on her legs and face in her hair. Her ponytail became messy. Her pink scrunchie Crowley had put in it falling out. She squealed in excitement. The dog’s tail wagged furiously.

“Zira—”

“She’s wanted one so bad, and the nice lady across the street found an abandoned litter yesterday. She asked if I wanted one, and I couldn’t say no, could I? When I knew that she was trying to rescue them from going a pound? And when Eden’s wanted a dog?”

“She’s only wanted a dog for a month because a classmate got one,” Crowley hissed. “I was waiting for her to grow out of it.”

Zira looked at Eden and the puppy. His eyebrows were furrowed. He pulled at his hands even more. “They look sweet together, though—”

“Zira, I don’t care! There’s so many things about this that are wrong.”

“She’s _my_ child as well. You seem to forget that.”

That was it. The final straw.

“Eden, stay here for a bit. I have to talk to your papa downstairs.”

Crowley closed the door and turned Zira towards the stairs. The spiral design made marching down them a little less dramatic, but Crowley attempted to keep an air of serious discontent by stomping.

“What the _Hell?_ ” he hissed once they were in the bookshop and Eden was safely out of earshot. “Do you even know what goes into raising a dog?”

“Yes. I bought her everything she needs. I _have_ been looking after her.”

“For what? Less than 24 hours? Did you manage to train it in that time? Has it had accidents in your flat?”

Zira looked to the side and raised his chin as he did when he knew he was losing an argument but was looking to keep his dignity. “There was _one_ accident in the kitchen last night. But it was my fault. I got the poor thing excited and didn’t get her on her leash fast enough.”

Crowley crossed his arms. He felt he should have been angrier with Zira, but a part of his brain was still in shock and disbelief. Like it was all a bad dream, and he was going to wake up on the sofa a few minutes before he had to leave to pick up Eden from school.

“And what’s your plan?” he asked. “I take this dog home with me and do all the work to get her housebroken?”

“I was thinking Eden would do that—”

“She’s _seven_ and in school for most of the day. Did you not think any of this through? I’m going to be the one stuck with this dog all day. _I’m_ going to be taking it outside at 3 am and cleaning up pee and finding my throw pillows destroyed. And it’s not going to stay that cute size forever. It’s going to get bigger, and it’ll destory more—and it needs to see a vet if your neighbor found it abandoned. It could have worms or something. Did you at least think about getting it tags and vaccines before pawning it off to us?”

Crowley rubbed his hands over his face. How could Zira be so thoughtless? Why would he do this? Why would he ever think it was a good idea?

“I just wanted to make Eden happy,” Zira said, earnestly.

Crowley couldn’t respond. He had to make a plan to blow off steam somewhere. Not in the same building as his child. Maybe he could pick up plants at a nursery near by and stuff them into pots and snap at them. Or maybe there were ducks in the park he could throw peas at.

The barking was heard again and then Eden was walking down the stairs, holding the dog by her pink collar. Her smile took up her entire face.

“Do I get to keep her?” she asked.

Crowley couldn’t take the dog away now. It would be cruel. To her _and_ the dog. It would just end up in a small cage somewhere before another thoughtless parent picked it up.

“On one condition,” Crowley said. “It stays here with papa.”

“I’m not sure if I—” Crowley caught Zira off with a glare. Zira nodded. “Your father is right. She’ll stay with me. So long as she stays out of the bookshop. That’ll be your responsibility when you’re here.”

“Got it!” Eden said. “Can I stay with you tonight, then, papa?”

“Of course, my love. As long as it’s alright with…”

Crowley nodded. He wouldn’t turn down a little alone time at that moment. “I’ll bring you an overnight bag and a new uniform for school later.”

“Why not go back upstairs and give her a treat? They’re on the counter.” Zira said. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

Eden guided the dog back up the steps, encouraging her all the way.

Crowley didn’t know what to feel anymore except tired.

“Are you staying for dinner?” Zira asked. “We can talk about this more.”

“No.” Crowley pulled his sunglasses from the top of his head. “Make sure she does her homework and has a bath. I’ll bring her a bag before her bedtime.”

Crowley didn’t look at Zira as he left. He calmly left the shop and got in his car. He didn’t slam any doors or swear or mutter anything under his breath. He sat in the driver’s seat and stared out the windshield, key in the ignition. The radio was silent. The sounds of passing cars around him were silent. Looking back inside the shop for a second, Crowley could see that Zira was gone.

He was tired. Absolutely drained. There wasn’t any fight left in him.

He didn’t move or think until his phone buzzed.

It was a text from Bea.

_Can you pick files up from my office and a few things from the chemist? I’m actually dying, and I want to go in peace._

Crowley texted back quickly before throwing the car into drive, blinking back tears. It wouldn’t be good to drive if he couldn’t see past them.

_So long as I can have a healthy bitching session after._

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to support me as a writer and would like to see more of this AU, please check out my tumblr (mostweakhamlets)! I post original works there along with some story ideas that never make it here!


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